I want to take you back a couple of
years 30th of July 2012 the northern
electric grid in India folded up and
collapsed and this happened at about
2:30 in the morning so the next morning
there are some 700 million people who
woke up to a completely new reality
factories offices homes airports
hospitals nothing worked this was
history this was the single biggest
blackout that the world had ever
experienced in a situation where nothing
worked right I don't know how many of
you have experienced the traffic in New
Delhi anyone okay now imagine it without
the traffic lights and it gets really
interesting
so no radio no TV no internet no
drinking water this is a personal
favorite you can only flush the toilet
once this is particularly yeah so the
question that why you know why did this
happen why is the situation this way
it's very very easy to understand India
has one fifth of the world's population
it has one 30th of the energy that is
the root cause of the problem the
tragedy was not the blackout the real
tragedy is that there are 400 million
people 400 million people in India alone
who have never experienced electricity
pretty much everything that we've spoken
of here today is of no relevance to them
because they don't even have the basic
building block of a modern society they
don't have power so why doesn't India
solve this you know I mean it's been
independent for 50 years and and you
know it's a reasonably advanced country
well there's no simple answer there are
many reasons for that you know political
paralysis bureaucratic inefficiency but
probably the most relevant
reason is cost it is hugely expensive it
would be hundreds of billions of dollars
to build this infrastructure to serve
400 million people so if you're a
decision maker in India what would your
decision be
would you ration the available power and
channel it to the cities that we've
heard so much about today and the
industrial areas which are the engines
of your economy or would you refocus
that resource and provide energy to the
you know hundreds of millions who don't
have power today my point is that the
existing model itself is broken the way
we generate and distribute energy is
archaic this architecture that we have
of the grid today is over a hundred
years old
nothing has changed really since the
time we invented you know electricity
now typically what we do is we built
these gigantic power plants which cost
billions of dollars take anywhere from
five to seven years to build we fuel
these with coal with oil with natural
gas sometimes nuclear power now the
environmental aspects of burning all
this fossil fuel let's not even go there
so the interesting thing however in this
architecture is that thirty percent of
the energy which is generated one third
of this energy is lost this energy
travels thousands of kilometres before
it reaches the customer and one third of
it is lost on the way that is the
reality facing India today there has to
be a better way there has to be a
simpler cheaper easier way there is a
simpler cheaper easier way now instead
of building these gigantic power plants
how about if we shift the model however
if we flip it on its back if we instead
of building these huge power plants
build small ones instead instead of
concentrating all the resources and one
large one if we distribute these power
plants across the country instead of
using fossil fuels how about if we use
clean energy and and solar and
wind instead and that is what we do
today so the real hero here are the new
technologies that are available
it is lithium batteries it's low-cost
solar cells its high efficiency motors
it's super bright LEDs these
technologies didn't exist ten years ago
this and the large-scale manufacturing
of these technologies is what brought
the price down to the point where we
today have grid parity it's a fancy term
of saying it's as cheap to do it with
this than it is with the grid another
aspect which is very very important is
that technology enough is not gonna
solve your problem you need to adopt a
low cost approach low cost needs to be a
mindset low cost needs to be a
philosophy low cost needs to become a
religion and when it is executed
properly low cost thinking can deliver
amazing results and since many of us
were referring to movies here today I'm
gonna do that as well this was last
year's super blockbuster gravity I don't
know how many if you saw this movie now
this cost some hundred million dollars
to produce a gravity is a movie about a
space mission now just one month ago on
the 24th of September India put a
spacecraft into orbit around Mars
this was the Mongolian project this
entire project costs just 74 million
dollars and that is you know the miracle
that low-cost thinking can deliver so
where's all this leading you know how
what is this relevant well today it is
possible to deliver clean lighting you
can light up a home at the bottom of the
pyramid for as little as two dollars a
month two dollars a month is not a lot
of money for two dollars a month a
shopkeeper can keep his shop open for
extra three to four hours almost
doubling their income and if you really
feel like splurging for six dollars a
month this will land you in the lap of
luxury not only can you light up your
house you can now use a fan to cool you
when it's 45 degrees hot outside you can
charge your phone you can charge your
computer even now perhaps the real
game-changer is something like this this
is a very simple electric bicycle but
really this is a revenue multiplier for
a small farmer just taking their
vegetables and produce an extra 20
kilometers can sometimes double the
amount of money that they can get paid
for what's the next step well my goal is
five years from today we will have 1,000
of these power plants serving 20 million
people five years is a long time away
next year we will have 200 plants by the
end of next year and these will serve 4
million people finally giving them the
tool to extract themselves from extreme
poverty thank you very much